In the manufacture of various types of tissue products such as facial tissue, bath tissue, paper towels and the like, the dried tissue web or sheet coming off of the tissue machine is initially wound into a parent roll and temporarily stored for further processing. Sometime thereafter, the parent roll is unwound and the sheet is converted into a final product form.
New tissue reels and winders having an endless belt are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,918 entitled Apparatus and Method for Winding Paper issued May 11, 1999 to Klerelid et al. and Apparatus and Method For Winding Paper, U.S. patent application No. 10/265021 filed Oct. 4, 2002, both herein incorporated by reference in a manner consistent herewith. Belted reels are effective in the winding of tissue webs having a bulk of 6 cubic centimeters per gram or higher and a high level of softness, as characterized, for example, by an MD Max Slope of about 10 kilograms or less per 3 inches of sample width. Such reels and winding methods can be used to produce dimensionally correct and dimensionally stable parent rolls of such soft tissue webs having diameters on the order of 70 to 150 inches. Such parent rolls are disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,944,273 entitled Parent Roll for Tissue Paper issued Aug. 31, 1999 to Lin et al. and herein incorporated by reference in a manner consistent herewith.
In winding the tissue web into a large parent roll, it required to either initially thread the paper machine to start winding or to terminate the winding of one roll while initiating winding on a new roll during a turn-up. However, as the winding speeds of belted reels are increased to production rates exceeding 3,600 fpm, effectuating an efficient turn-up or threading of the paper machine can be problematic, especially when producing high bulk tissue webs. Therefore, there is a need for a high level of turn-up and threading efficiency in order to manufacture such tissue webs cost effectively.
These and other needs are met by the apparatus and method according to the present invention which includes a reel spool having a cylindrical surface, the cylindrical surface including at least one axial line of adhesive and a plurality of apertures operatively connected to a source of vacuum.
In another aspect, the invention resides in an apparatus including a reel spool having a cylindrical surface, the cylindrical surface including at least one axial line of adhesive and at least one axial line of a plurality of apertures operatively connected to a source of vacuum; a transfer belt mounted for rotation around a plurality of support rolls defining a predetermined path of travel, the predetermined path of travel having a winding region and a web transport region; a sensor measuring a deflection of the transfer belt in the winding region from the predetermined path of travel; an actuator for positioning the reel spool and the transfer belt relative to each other to vary the deflection; and a controller connected to the sensor and the actuator for controlling the deflection.
In another aspect the invention resides in a method including the steps of creating a vacuum inside of a reel spool, contacting the reel spool with a web, and the reel spool having a cylindrical surface, at least one axial line of adhesive, and a plurality of apertures.